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Saturday, October 08, 2005

The Elusive Exclusive


Exclusive, I type the word and press Ctrl+Alt+W on my keyboard. WordWeb (a very handy software) presents me these meanings for the word:

Noun:

1. A news report that is reported first by one news organization

Adjective:

1. Not divided or shared with others
2. Excluding much or all; especially all but a particular group or minority
3. Not divided among or brought to bear on more than one object or objective

And the not so handy Pocket Oxford Dictionary has this to say:

exclusive —adj. 1 excluding other things. 2 (predic.; foll. by of) not including; except for. 3 tending to exclude others, esp. socially. 4 high-class. 5 not obtainable elsewhere or not published elsewhere. —n. article etc. published by only one newspaper etc.

exclusively adv. exclusiveness n. exclusivity n. [medieval Latin: related to *exclude]

I wasted my not-so-precious time browsing through a few more lexicons, but they all conveyed similar meanings and nothing was close what I was looking for - the meaning of the word 'EXCLUSIVE' as our television news channels understand it. Almost every day I come across a story (piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events) in one of the umpteen news channels which proudly display the word 'exclusive' on one of the corners of the screen. Only to switch to the next channel running the same story 'exclusively.' Sometimes there are three or even four providing 'exclusive' coverage.

"What's so exclusive in them?" I wonder aloud. My flatmate who has many such 'exclusives' behind him puts my queries to rest, "You don't get it yaar! It's the camera angle which is exclusive. Other channels are airing only the front view, this channel is exclusively bringing you the profile."

I get the meaning and press the power button on the remote.

And remember you read about this EXCLUSIVELY on this blog.

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